Walking in a Winter Wonderland....

Last evening, I decided to close the shutters before going to bed. I only do this on the weekend, b/c closing the shutters means not letting light into the room, which it makes it very easy to sleep till noon without even realizing it. So, this morning when I awoke at noon, I decided to go to the store to buy peas to take the school's Thankgiving party this evening. Since my shutters were closed, I had not seen the outdoors. Imagine my surprise when I opened my front door to find this:

Here is the view from my bedroom window:

After my grocery shopping, I went up to Piazza Maggiore:

All of this snow has made me realize that I really need to buy a hat. And bring my combat boots back to Bologna after Christmas, so that I have a chance against the snow....

Night Before Thanksgiving Fun

Well, I held to my pledge to visit a bar tonight and to celebrate the night before Thanksgiving. Here is the proof:

Poor Mark had to suffer through the Willers/Duffy/Clinton night before Thanksgiving tradition. I think he survived....

Before this, we attended the opera--a modern version of La Traviata. We sat in the front row and it was pretty cool overall. This was only my second opera--the first I saw at the Sydney Opera House in 2000.

It was a really good evening. Helped keep my mind off missing the yearly Rongo outing....

The Night Before Thanksgiving

In 1996, my family started a night before Thanksgiving tradition of going to the Rongovian Embassy, a local watering hole in my hometown of Trumansburg, NY. The first year, it was my dad, Uncle Tom, cousins Ben, Jason, Ashley, and me. It was a jolly good time. Since then, every year we have gone back, except for last year when the Rongo was closed. It is back open this year, but unfortunately I am in Italy and will not be able to join in on the Rongo fun.

But do not fret, my pets. Tomorrow night I will be attending the opera, La Traviata, but after that, I will be going out to a bar to celebrate the night before Thanksgiving in a traditional manner. I will be taking a picture of me and posting it here, so you can see that I AM partaking in the holiday. Or at least part of it....

A Thanksgiving Dinner

This past weekend was a busy one in terms of fun activities. First, I had the pleasure to attend a Thanksgiving feast thrown at my friend Kurt's house. Kurt and Mark were the chefs of the evening. I won't elaborate on what they made for the meal, so as not to make you jealous in regards to your own Turkey day feasts. Let's just say it was all quite tasty. And Mark's desserts were the best I've tasted since the last time I had my mother's cheesecake. Anyways, here are some pictures from the fete:

Here are Adam and Mark, pre-party. Mark is taking a picture of his creations. Funny, I wasn't asked to cook. I wonder why....I brought a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau instead. I think everyone was happier with this arrangement....

Zach and Sam trimming the Christmas tree

Mark giving a Thanksgiving toast, with Kurt to left. Kathleen is on my right.

Mark and myself with empty plates....The food must have been good!!

Another Bolognese Dining Experience

Last night a group of us decided to try our hand at having another decadent, extremely filling Bolognese meal. The decor/atmosphere of the osteria was amazing. It is located on a small side street right off of San Vitale (I know this means nothing to you, but come to visit me in Bologna and it will!) and is nothing more than a door with a small sign on top of it. When you go into the restaurant, you literally descend into the basement of the building and you discover that the restaurant extends all the way back into this great, dramatic room:

For dinner we had a few really rich pastas. One dish was gnocchi that was literally drowning in gorgonzola cheese. I have never tasted anything so rich. My heart literally skipped a beat when I took my first bite. And, of course, we had a lot of Prosecco. You can't go out to dinner without having Prosecco! Anyways, the participants of this affair:

From left, Pete, Liam, Zach, and Mark

Courtney and Pete

Mark and me (not really sure what I am telling him)

Adam and Natalie

Jeanette (who just got back from a whirlwind 4-day jaunt to Vegas, where she partied down with Paris Hilton)

After dinner, Natalie, Mark, and myself headed to the 10th anniversary celebration of our favorite Bologna-based Irish pub--the Celtic Druid. It was pretty crowded, but we couldn't not celebrate the Celtic's birthday!!

Firing Squad

I realize that I never posted about the fact that I am now a teaching assistant for Macroeconomics. So far that has meant that I have held office hours (Where I sit in a room and wonder if anyone will actually come see me. One person did this week. It was swell.), graded problem sets, and this week, I held a review session for about 40 people with my co-TA.



Let me tell you, the review session was a tad nerve-wracking-40 people in a room excepting ME to have the answer. It was like taking an oral economics exam (which is something that I actually have to do at the end of my two years, so I suppose this is good practice). In the end, everything turned out very well. I seemed to know the answers to the questions people asked. And I only screwed up one thing--my GDP deflator calculation--but I recognized the error and everything proceeded well from there. So, all things considered everything went pretty well. And I think I have, in general, become far more comfortable speaking in front of crowds of people, which I figure can only be a good thing, right?

An Update

So, I feel badly that I have not been able to keep my torrent pace of updates going. I believe this to be a function of three things--1) I have been studying quite a bit, which is an activity that does not lend itself well to blogging, 2) I have been returning to and doing things that I have already documented to a great extent (do we really need more pictures of me at the Celtic Druid? I mean, if you want more, let me know, but otherwise....), & 3) I have found that I do not carry my camera around as much as I did at first.

I look at the first and third points as being valid reasons. The first, obviously, is a sad fact of being back in school. A lot of time spent in the library. The third point, however, is a little more interesting. On the one hand, it could be related to point one. Since I generally do not do anything of note on any given day, I am not as apt to make sure I have my camera with me as I walk out the door. On the other hand, perhaps my lack of a camera signifies that I have stopped thinking of myself as a tourist in this town and, therefore, am less apt to take pictures. For instance, looking back, I strolled down a beautiful street on Saturday, which was lined with all sorts of fruit and meat markets. Very old world, very picturesque. I was not even inclined to take a picture. (now, thinking about it, I might go back and take a couple)

This is the market street, but I swiped the picture from Google:

Although an experience today snapped me back to my picture-happy self. I was walking home from school, caught site of the Christmas decorations, and wanted to take a picture. But I didn't have my camera. Yes, the Christmas decorations have been up in Bologna for at least a week. However, I will save this for tomorrow or Wed, when I have pictures to accompany the text.

In the meantime, if you have made it this far through my babble, I appreciate it. I promise I will have more excitement soon. Or at least more excitement that I think to take a picture of....I hope to take a trip to Venice or Verona or sometime soon, but I think my workload will dictate those plans....For now, though, if anyone has any thoughts on the presence of US nukes in Europe, please let me know!

Florence

Okay, first let me heartily apologize from my very long absence from blogging. Not sure where the time has gone. I've even had things to blog about! So, without further ado, I present my day-trip to Florence that I took Halloween weekend. Yes, Halloween has just been upgraded to a holiday deserving its own weekend. Anyways....

The decision was made to (finally) embark on the one-hour trip to Florence. With the number of times this expedition has been put off, you'd think Florence was an arduous one-day trek-through-the-desert away. But no, it is theoretically only an hour away.

Megan, Mark, and I show up at the train station at 8:45 Am on Saturday morning. Pretty impressive feat, in and of itself. So, when do we actually arrive in Florence, after the train delays and being forced to take the much slower Regionale train? Oh, about noon. Such a happy time. Actually, it wasn't too bad, because the leaves were changing in the countryside. All was not lost.

Anyway, in the time we were in Florence, we saw:

Duomo

We even made the 473-step climb to the top of the Duomo, via some very winding, stone staircases (Also please note the date of this trip--October 29th. And yes, I am wearing a tank top. And my Birks! Jealous? The last time this year for both of those, I am afraid):

The real jewel of the Duomo is the Michelangelo's "Gates of Paradise" painted on the ceiling of the Duomo.

The Ponte Vecchio bridge on the other side of the River Arno, reported to have existed since Roman times:

Mark and myself on the side of the river:

And that was Florence. I tried to purchase a leather satchel, so as to avoid the embarrassment of showing up for a business-type event at the local HQ of an Italian bank wearing a suit and carrying my hideously ugly backpack. But, alas, the satchel was not meant to be that day....Actually, the leather products (for which Florence is known) turned out to be more expensive that I thought. For sad, very sad indeed....

Oh, the other interesting part of this adventure was how happy we all were to return to Bologna. I think I have mentioned this before, but one of the beauties of Bologna is there are virtually no tourists. Just the locals and us. Once in a while you run into a stray visitor, but there are no souvenir shops lining the streets or huge throngs of Americans. The exact opposite was true of Florence. Foreigners everywhere. I said that if I encountered a Taco Bell, I was getting on the train and going back to Bologna. The lowest point was when I went into a small cafe to purchase a bottle of water. I had said nothing to the man, but when he quoted my tab to me, he did so in English--did not even try with the Italian. In Bologna, they always quote prices to me in Italian. So, it was nice to return to the "real Italy" in Bologna....